They were completely bewildered. They had received assignments from Boss Pei before, but their assignments had always been relatively simple.
For example, Boss Pei once asked them to get rid of all purchase options but a basic one in Bloody Battle Song. After much thought, Ye Zhizhou finally came up with the ‘Chosen One’ system.
That was because the game already had a complete framework. Ye Zhizhou only had to make minor alterations to it.
It was the same when they worked on the mobile version of Bloody Battle Song as well. Basically, there had been no change to the game’s framework. They had still been working with familiar material; that was why everything went smoothly and easily.
However, this time was completely different.
Horror games and standalone games were uncharted territories for the company. Boss Pei had also given very hazy directions. They felt like they were groping around in the dark.
Not knowing how to proceed, they both turned to face Lin Wan. Everyone at Shang Yang Games was considered inexperienced at guessing Boss Pei’s true intentions.
“Director Lin, come and brainstorm with us. What kind of game does Boss Pei want us to create?”
Lin Wan casually pulled a chair over and sat down. She remained silent for a while before saying, “Actually, I’m a beginner at guessing Boss Pei’s intentions, too. I’m still a far cry from a lot of other seniors.
“However, I have learned a lot from Bao Xu. I can share these lessons with you.”
Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin quickly retrieved their notebooks again and listened closely to Lin Wan.
It’s coming! The important learning point is coming!
What was the core competitive strength among employees in Tengda?
It was the ability to guess Boss Pei’s intentions!
As the main leader of Tengda Corporation, Boss Pei was ambitious and far-sighted. At the same time, he had a unique, deep, and accurate understanding of the market and gamers’ psyche. Often, when Boss Pei gave them a game to work on, he would already have an idea of what the game would look like and how the market would react in the end.
Thus, whether each project could succeed or not depended on how well the employees understood Boss Pei’s intentions.
Now, Director Lin was going to share with everyone how to guess Boss Pei’s intentions. Without a doubt, this was as valuable as treasure!
Lin Wan recalled her days working in Tengda Games and thought about how Bao Xu explained a lot of Boss Pei’s actions. She had wanted to summarize these lessons a long time ago, and now, she had found an opportune moment to do so.
“First, we can be confident that Boss Pei’s directions are always right. We must ignore all costs and follow them. You may think that this sounds superficial, but this would be the foundation of all your inferences.
“You should take Boss Pei’s points as self-evident and absolutely axiomatic. On that basis, you can start making inferences.”
Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin felt slightly light-headed. It was almost as if they were students attending Philosophy classes all over again.
Yet, this was to be expected. These were important concepts. It would be strange if they found them easy to understand.
Both of them continued listening closely. Lin Wan spoke again. “When Bao Xu worked on Ocean Stronghold, he used Boss Pei’s axioms as his starting point. He kept rejecting content that did not fit with the axioms and adding content that did. Finally, he completed the game’s first prototype.
“Now, we can do the same.
“We’ll take the first point first—the most important one. The horror game must be a web-based one. Games that allow multiple players to enter at once can only involve cooperating or fighting. “Players could fight with the computer or with other players. The former would mean multiple players have to work together to solve puzzles. The latter would be similar to war games. Since Boss Pei has emphasized that we should not come up with a storyline, we can’t have two or more people working on puzzles together.
“That means we must design the game so that people have to cooperate with or fight one another.”
“That means our game could take on a similar model to many other board games. There could be a time limit of ten minutes to two hours. Depending on the number of players, there could be different tasks. Between the players, we could also use both the cooperation and fighting models.”
Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin nodded.
That analysis clarified many things! Most importantly, they had decided to base the game on board games. Now, both of them could roughly picture what the game would look like.
Lin Wan looked at them and said, “You can try figuring out the rest.”
Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin exchanged a look, feeling like they had just been called on by the teacher to answer a question. The question had already been solved halfway, but the students now had to complete the answer.
Ye Zhizhou pondered for a moment and said, “We can’t include ghosts and monsters, but can have insane people at most. That’s another important clue.
“There aren’t many examples among other games, but what if we look at movies?”
Chapter 330 - Multiplayer Horror Game, Be Quiet!
Chapter 330 Multiplayer Horror Game, Be Quiet!
“Many horror movies made use of ghosts, monsters, and mutations. The visual impact of these was very powerful, but there existed another kind of horror movies that contained only ordinary people. The horrific effects are normally more outstanding.
“To put it plainly, horror is an emotion. There’s no need to obsess over ghosts, monsters, or mutated living beings to make a strong visual impact.
“Take our company as an example. We just had to close the curtains and immerse everyone in the atmosphere of horror. A single scream was enough to make us all feel terrified.
“That’s why the atmosphere is the most important. The human heart can be scarier than ghosts and monsters at times. That’s the most important point.
“If we can recreate the same feeling that we felt in the office in the game, wouldn’t the game be just as scary?”.
Wang Xiaobin strongly agreed with this observation. “That’s right, that’s right. I wanted to say the same thing.
“How about this? We’ll set a scary scene in the game and then throw all the players in, so that the fear can ‘infect others’ and ‘spread’. It’ll be just like what happened in our office.”
Ye Zhizhou continued, “In other words, our game will not induce fear by creating images of ghosts and monsters. Instead, it will induce fear using the malice of other gamers, the continually-expanding atmosphere of horror, and the surroundings. “Once the fear spreads, players might start fighting
“We cannot expect them to fully cooperate with one another. Otherwise, it would feel like a walk in the park for them because there’s strength in numbers. It’ll not be sufficiently challenging, and we would achieve the opposite of what we hope to.
“We have to cause infighting and conflict amongst players, so that they can scare one another. It would be precisely these unexpected threats and dangers that would generate fear, right?
“As for how the gamers would fight… Boss Pei had already revealed it to us: the weapon system!”
Ye Zhizhou looked at the third point that Boss Pei had emphasized. “The strongest weapon would be a pistol. Since everyone in the game is an ordinary person, and there would not be any ghosts or monsters, there would be no need for particularly powerful weapons. Those would only cause an imbalance in the players’ battles with one another.
“Other weapons could include daggers, stones, and anything that could hurt-but not kill-an ordinary person.” As both of them discussed the game, they took down notes.
Lin Wan found an appropriate time to interject. “There’s a hidden design in these instructions. Boss Pei did not reveal it to us explicitly, but the design seemed obvious as you were discussing the game. “The fact that fear is to spr
ead among players means that most players should be ‘innocents’ in the beginning. Yet, the fact that they have to fight later on means that a portion of the players would become ‘assailants’.
“What would cause the change?”
Ye Zhizhou frowned as he thought deeply. “I remember Boss Pei saying that… the game should contain insane people at most?”
Lin Wan nodded. “That’s right, insane people! The assailants should be people who are mentally ill—in other words, lunatics.
“I think we can include the concept of a ‘mental health meter’, which already exists in many other games. That’s also known as a sanity meter. The elements in the surroundings will pile on the mental stress on players. Once they hit a certain value, the players would become insane. Then, they would become assailants, whose primary aim would be to kill the ordinary players.”
As Wang Xiaobin noted these details down, he nodded. “Indeed. Now that we’ve talked it out, everything looks much clearer. “We’re just lacking the finer details.
“For example… many people will be playing this web-based game. Should we add a voice chat function to allow players to communicate while playing the game?
“If we allow players to communicate while playing the game, they might engage in a string of lame behaviors and reduce the game’s horror effect. They could also use the voice chat function to discuss how to play tricks on others, find loopholes in the game, and make it less fun overall.
“Yet, if we don’t allow players to communicate… it might feel less interesting. Players wouldn’t have other ways to communicate, and they might fight everyone instead of trying to work together.”
Ye Zhizhou pondered for a moment. “This is easy to resolve. Since ‘in-game chatting’ is so important, we can think of a way to restrict their chatter.
“Players can communicate, but not at will. Every single sentence they speak would be precious. If they speak too much, they would be punished.
“Maybe… they could become lunatics.
“A good horror game should have an atmosphere similar to the one in our office. Everyone should be trying to advance while groping about in the dark. If someone suddenly speaks, everyone will start screaming. “Speaking of which, I suddenly thought of a good name for the game.
“Be Quiet! In Mandarin, it’ll just say ‘Shh!’!”
As the three of them brainstormed, they developed more and more ideas for the game.
Basically, Be Quiet would be a multiplayer horror game. Every round would contain eight players and a random number of NPCs. There could be anywhere from four to eight NPCs, which would be controlled by artificial intelligence. Their purpose would be to confuse players. All players and NPCs would first enter a randomly generated map in the game. There, they would have to look for items and the way out. They would also have to interact with other players and NPCs.
There would be different maps in the game. For now, they had come up with a mental institution, a village of lunatics, a hotel in the countryside, an ancient castle, and a school.
These maps would all be highly randomized. At the start of each game, a set algorithm would randomize every room’s purpose and the items to be found inside.
In each room, players could find items that they could pick up, as well as stage props. Stage props could not be picked up, but players could interact with them to generate a special effect. For example, a radio could play a designated audio recording and increase the player’s mental stress.
Players and NPCs would also spawn on random areas of the map. Once the game began, they would be allowed to roam around to look for clues and items.
Players would find special items around the area as well, such as daggers, bandages, psychotropic drugs, mysterious statues, and the like. These props could be used to attack others or heal oneself. Some could reduce mental stress while others would increase mental stress.
How these props should be used would depend on individual players’ game strategies.
At the same time, the eight players would take on different roles at the start of the game. The method of winning the game would in turn depend on their roles.
Among the eight players, one would be a police officer, three would be good guys, three would be mentally-ill, and one would be an ambitious schemer.
The police officer and good guys would have a common goal—to escape. The mentally-ill people’s goal would be to either drive everyone crazy or kill them. The ambitious schemer’s goal would be to end up as the last one standing.
Half of the NPCs present would also be good guys while the other half would be mentally-ill people.
Anytime a player died, his role would be exposed. There would be weapons and items around the map. Once the police officer spawned, he would have a pistol, which could deal great damage to both good guys and bad guys alike. Other players could collect items from around the map or drop them on the ground for other players to pick up. Daggers and glare flashlights would be common items. Daggers would deal damage to ordinary people while glare flashlights would deal greater damage to lunatics.
Players could also look for rarer items like axes and stun grenades. Of course, these would be more powerful.
The mentally-ill would be different from lunatics. ‘Lunatics’ was a concept for ordinary people.
At the start of each round, the police officer, the good guys, the mentally ill, and the ambitious schemer would all be considered ordinary people. All of them would have the same stats.
As time passed and under the influence of the surrounding props, players’ sanity meter would keep decreasing. When they hit a certain point and fail to consume special pills, they would turn from ordinary people into lunatics.
Lunatics would have higher speed, more health points, and greater power than ordinary people. However, once they became lunatics, the player would lose all ability to communicate. What’s more, their muscles would expand and they would look different, so as to allow other players to identify their status.
Voice chat would be allowed in the game, but it would be strictly limited.
Each time they wanted to speak, players would only be given ten seconds to say one sentence. Once they were done, the recording would be edited by the system before being broadcast to other players.
Every time they spoke, the players’ sanity meter would decrease.
If they did not speak at all, others could mistake them as enemies or bots. Yet, if they spoke too much, they would be at higher risk of becoming lunatics; and other players could suspect their true motives.
On top of this, in order to prevent trolls from trying to inject humor into the game, Shang Yang Games would get rid of the most meaningless actions.
For example, players would only be allowed to jump when they reach a particular terrain. Otherwise, they would not be allowed to.
The fact that players—especially those playing mentally-ill people or the ambitious schemer-could use different strategies and methods in the game was inspired by board games.
The police officer and good guys had to roam around the map looking for machinery or exits, warn other good guys, and deal with any signs of infection quickly and decisively.
The mentally-ill would have much lower sanity meters than the good guys. Thus, they could use the props around the map to become a lunatic and attack the good guys, or they could act as good guys and mislead the actual good guys and trap them.
The ambitious schemer could also act as a good guy or become a lunatic to achieve his own goal.
Every player in the game would keep guessing other parties’ roles while trying to keep to their strategy.
An overall score would be calculated at the end of the round, taking into account every player’s difference in stats, game time, and role.
For example, it would be extremely difficult for ambitious schemers to achieve their goal. Thus, even if they did not, only some points would be deducted. On the other hand, if they did, a lot of points would be added. The system wou
ld also add points for attacks, kills, solved riddles, and collected items. That would ensure even ambitious schemers would be motivated to play well despite their difficult missions.
In just one short afternoon, the general framework of the game was complete.
They raised problems and resolved them, forming a continuous, virtuous cycle. Soon, they had some details for the game’s design set.
As they looked at the nearly-completed first draft of their design manuscript, Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin could not help but feel moved.
Everything went much smoother than they had imagined!
Before this, they had tried to think of the game’s design while playing as many horror games as possible. Even after two weeks, they did not achieve much.
Yet, now, after just one afternoon, they could picture what the game would look like!
What caused the difference between these two attempts?
It was Boss Pei’s directions and Director Lin’s analysis of Boss Pei’s intentions. They only had to follow the directions to solve all the problems easily!
Although nobody knew if the game would succeed, the gameplay was at least set. There was nothing like it in the market, and that meant there would be no competitors. Players would have a novel experience with this game. Moreover, the fact that Boss Pei had pointed them in this direction made them feel more confident.
Ye Zhizhou read the design manuscript, feeling emotional.
“Could it be that this was what Boss Pei imagined the horror game would look like? How exciting!”
Chapter 331 - Tengda Spirit Compatibility Test
Chapter 331 Tengda Spirit Compatibility Test
When he arrived back at Tengda Games, Pei Qian checked on the progress of GOG.
The game was still at the conceptual designing stage. Li Yada was still struggling with the basic design details.
However, they were already more or less ready to buy over some small IPs. They had hired professionals to conduct negotiations with local and foreign companies.
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